Israel Defense Forces officials told cabinet ministers on Monday that
should Israel undergo a coordinated missile attack, there would be
less than 300 Israeli casualties.

The number was mentioned by IDF officials during a discussion in
Israel´s security-diplomatic cabinet, Channel 10 reported on Monday,
and is far lower than the number mentioned previously by Defense
Minister Ehud Barak, who reportedly said that a maximum of 500
Israelis would die in such an attack.

During the meeting, a senior official in the Israel Air Force told
the cabinet ministers that in the event of a coordinated missile
attack on Israel´s home front, missiles and rockets would be fired at
Israel by the Syrian army, Hezbollah in Lebanon, terror organizations
in Gaza, and most probably by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as
well.

According to one of the cabinet ministers, the IAF believes that for
three weeks, thousands of missiles and rockets would land in Israel,
and the number of people dead would reach 300, as well as hundreds of
people wounded and severe damage to property and infrastructure. The
officer who presented the data before the ministers noted that the
scenario is an assessment based on the situation in 2012, but could
change in the future.

Despite that the subject of the discussion was not the possibility of
war with Iran, such a coordinated terror attack on Israel is expected
mostly in the event of an Israeli strike on Iran´s nuclear
facilities. The defense establishment is split regarding the
dimensions of an Iranian attack.

Another argument surrounds the question whether Syria, Hezbollah, and
Hamas would join Iran and launch missiles toward Israel. According to
some of the assessments in the intelligence community, the Iranian
response would include aid from Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas, but
other assessments suggest that these actors would be deterred by the
Israeli retaliation against them and would not rush to aid Iran.